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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26998810">find you in the day</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterbazooca/pseuds/peterbazooca'>peterbazooca</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Teen Wolf (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Canonical Character Death, Feelings, M/M, Scott Goes to France, because feelings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:26:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,892</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26998810</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterbazooca/pseuds/peterbazooca</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t know how long it’ll take, how long I’ll be…”</p>
<p>Gone. Isaac is leaving. Leaving the pack, leaving Beacon Hills. </p>
<p>Leaving him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Isaac Lahey/Scott McCall</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>73</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>find you in the day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I'm having a Teen Wolf Renaissance and I haven't written a fic in, like, ten years. This ignores two things: Melissa/Argent and Scott/Malia.</p>
<p>Enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Argent is leaving for France in two days. He says he has contacts in Marseille who think they have an idea on how to destroy the Nogitsune.”</p>
<p>Scott nods. His head feels too heavy. With every dip of his chin he fears he won’t be able to raise his head back up. But he manages. From where he sits next to Scott on the edge of his bed, Isaac shifts. </p>
<p>“I’m going with him.”</p>
<p>The words don’t make much of a dent in the silence between them. Scott is looking at his hands as each syllable works its way into his ears. He keeps looking at them as the silence grows. And he knows he should say something—</p>
<p>
  <i>Why now please don’t I just lost her and I don’t know if I can lose you too</i>
</p>
<p>So many things he wants to say. Too many. They pile up behind his teeth and clog his throat and he <i>can’t</i>—</p>
<p>“I don’t know how long it’ll take, how long I’ll be…”</p>
<p><i>Gone.</i> Isaac is leaving. Leaving the pack, leaving Beacon Hills. </p>
<p>Leaving him. </p><hr/>
<p>Scott remembers when he first noticed Isaac. It wasn’t that day on the lacrosse field, brutalizing his own teammates as he tried to sniff out the new wolf he had sensed in the locker room. It wasn’t at Kate Argent’s funeral, where Isaac lurked far away from the grave, in his father’s shadow, watching Allison and her family at their lowest. </p>
<p>It was three years ago, a Friday afternoon detention he was only in because of Stiles. It was the two of them and one other boy slumped in the farthest corner from Harris’s desk. Scott recognized him, vaguely. He had seen him at lacrosse tryouts last week, but he didn’t know his name. </p>
<p>Ten minutes into detention and boredom had gotten the best of Stiles. Twisting around in his seat, he whisper-screamed across the rows. </p>
<p>“Hey. Hey you. What are you in for?”  </p>
<p>The boy had looked up at them and quickly away. Scott hadn’t needed super werewolf eyesight to notice the splotchy blue bruise growing on the kid’s jaw. Or the fading, yellowish one under his right eye.</p>
<p>“Forgot my homework,” he had mumbled, long fingers playing with a rip in the knees of his jeans. </p>
<p>“Wow. You’re a real rebel,” Stiles scoffed. </p>
<p>The kid had flinched, but instead of shrinking down further in his seat, he had looked up, curly hair flopping over his forehead, eyes flashing. </p>
<p>“Oh yeah?” he had whispered, leaning forward over his desk. “And what revolutionary act of civil disobedience are you in for? Pulling the fire alarm to get out of a pop quiz? Keying a teacher’s car to protest the dress code?”</p>
<p>Stiles’ pale cheeks had flushed. He had tried to stare the kid down, but his gaze was unnervingly steady, and Stiles had caved like a shoddy sandcastle. </p>
<p>“Passing notes during a test,” he had snapped, aiming for defiant and missing by a mile. The curly haired kid had grinned, fleeting, triumphant, before Harris had snapped at them to shut up.<br/>
Scott learned his name a few days later, during the first lacrosse practice of the semester. </p>
<p>Isaac Lahey.<br/>
</p><hr/>
<p>“You’re coming back, though. Right?”</p>
<p>Kira’s words are hesitant. She keeps shooting Scott this look out of the corner of her eye that Scott has no idea what to do with. Something fractured and awful flashes across Isaac’s face before he manages a smile. </p>
<p>“Yeah. Definitely.”</p>
<p>And maybe if Scott couldn’t smell the resignation on him, the acrid scent of it highlighted by his grief; if the stench of regret weren’t so strong that it sat like a physical lump in Scott’s own throat, he might believe him. </p>
<p>But he can, so he doesn’t. And he won’t say anything. If this is the only way Isaac can cope, Scott won’t be the one to stand in his way. Not even when the threat of Isaac’s imminent departure threatens to shatter him. </p><hr/>
<p>Scott doesn’t know when it started. When Isaac became so important to him. </p>
<p>He had always been aware of Isaac. He had sat on Scott’s radar since that detention their Freshman year. He was aware of Isaac the way all losers are, at the bare minimum, aware of each other’s presence. He even thought, once, about talking to him. During a game, the two of them and Stiles benched, watching their teammates get their asses handed to them by Mystic Falls High. But before Scott could decide one way or the other, Stiles was jabbing him in the side, pointing out at the field to where Jackson had just used a borderline illegal move to take down one of the other team’s offense players, and Scott forgot about the fleeting impulse to expand his social circle. </p>
<p>So he is aware of Isaac, but he doesn’t talk to him, not until fate or coincidence or just really bad luck starts throwing them into each other’s paths. And Scott tries to help him, in the beginning, before Derek’s screwed up method of protecting Beacon Hills combined with all of the rage Isaac’s terrible childhood gave him creates a ticking time bomb of a werewolf.</p>
<p>For a while, Scott thinks the quiet, fierce boy he met in detention Freshman year is beyond saving, even as he hates himself for even considering giving up on someone. But then the Kanima—Jackson—becomes an enemy neither Scott nor Derek can take down on their own. Circumstances force them to work together, to rely on each other when just a few weeks ago the very notion of relying on Derek or his pack seemed impossible. At the rave, Isaac shows Scott that he’s willing to do whatever it takes to eliminate a threat, and Scott starts to believe he isn’t as far gone as he had seemed, once. </p>
<p>Scott doesn’t know when it started. He knows when loner gravedigger Isaac Lahey became Derek’s snarky, vicious beta. But he doesn’t know when Derek’s snarky, vicious beta started looking at Scott like <i>that.</i></p>
<p>Like he trusted him. </p>
<p>Scott doesn’t know when Isaac looking at him like that started to feel like the whole world.</p><hr/>
<p>“Hey, you’ll finally have a use for all those scarves you’ve been collecting,” Stiles quips. There’s a smile on his face, and it lacks the sadness that tinges Lydia’s. Stiles and Isaac had never really gotten along. Scott knows it’s because Stiles could never bring himself to fully trust Isaac, not after he and Erica had so gleefully tried to kill Lydia not very long ago. </p>
<p>There’s no sadness in Stiles as he says goodbye, but there’s no malice, either, and honestly, that’s more than Scott ever could have asked for. And Isaac looks so damn grateful that Scott can’t look at him for a minute. </p>
<p>“The <i>Musѐe Cantini</i>,” Lydia says. “I think you’ll love it.”</p>
<p>Isaac grins at her. </p>
<p>“What, do you just have a list of all the museums in random French towns memorized?” Stiles asks, at once exasperated and a little awed as he looks at Lydia. </p>
<p>“It’s called doing your research, Stiles,” Lydia replies breezily. “You should try it sometime.”</p>
<p><i>“You should try it sometime</i>,” Stiles mimics in a high-pitched voice. Lydia punches him in the arm. Isaac laughs. </p>
<p>“I’m gonna miss you guys,” he says, quietly. Stiles and Lydia both look at him, and now Stiles does look sad. Just a little. </p>
<p>“We’re gonna miss you, too, buddy,” Stiles tells him, clapping him on the shoulder. </p>
<p>And Scott can feel the cracks forming, but he smiles anyway, refusing to let this break him.	</p><hr/>
<p>Scott’s mother is crying when she hugs Isaac, standing on her tiptoes so she can press a kiss to his cheek. </p>
<p>“Be careful,” she orders, words trembling, and Scott thinks his heart is breaking all over again. “And come home soon.”</p>
<p>Isaac’s shoulders sag on the word <i>home</i> and Scott swallows down another protest about this plan, this decision. Isaac has made his choice, and Scott can’t afford to be selfish, not about this. Isaac is careful not to look at Scott as he shoulders his bag, turns away. The two of them said goodbye already, sort of, and Scott does not know what else to say. His mother has her hands over her mouth. She looks so small as she watches Isaac leave. She meets Scott’s eyes and her smile shakes and Scott—</p>
<p>He can’t. </p>
<p>He’s out the door before he can talk himself out of it. They’re halfway down the driveway. Argent’s keys flash in his hand. </p>
<p>“Isaac,” he calls, and Isaac freezes, turns to face him, just like he always does. Argent does not freeze, does not turn back, just slides behind the wheel and sets his gaze anywhere else. And Scott takes a moment to think how much he’s going to miss Argent, too.</p>
<p>Isaac is looking at him. Or, trying to. His eyes stay fixed on what Scott thinks might be his left ear. Would this be easier if Isaac looked him in the eye? He has no idea. He steps in close, watches the way Isaac’s shoulders tense, listens to the dangerous thud of his wild heart, memorizes the echo of it in the hollows of his own chest. </p>
<p>“I get it,” he says. The twist of Isaac’s sudden frown lets Scott know how much Isaac isn’t buying that, but Scott keeps going anyway. “I do. If this is what…if this will <i>help</i>, then I get it. Just…when you’re ready to come back, we’ll be here.”</p>
<p>For the first time since…for the first time in <i>days</i>, Isaac meets his gaze, holds it. When he speaks, the words crack, ready to crumble. </p>
<p>“It could be a while.”</p>
<p>It’s another punch to the gut, and Scott has healed from far worse, but knowing that doesn’t make it hurt any less. </p>
<p>“Doesn’t matter,” Scott replies. Forces the words to become a promise, a vow. “You’re pack, and you always will be. You’re family.”</p>
<p>Isaac blinks, squinting into the unforgiving glare of the setting sun. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Scott’s vow hangs in the silence between them, solidifying itself more and more every second. Scott means it, and he needs Isaac to know that. And maybe Scott should say more. Maybe, if he could find the right words, Isaac would turn back, would walk up the driveway and through the front door, drop his backpack by the couch like he does every day after school and <i>stay</i>, really stay. </p>
<p>All of the things he could say batter at the back of his brain, words he hasn’t let himself think before, words that threaten to put a name to feelings he has refused to look at for so long. They lurch his stomach and numb his lips and for all of the impossible things he has seen and done and become he <i>can’t</i>—</p>
<p>So Isaac nods and turns away and Scott watches, silent, as he goes. He tracks the sweep of Isaac’s shoulders as he ducks into Argent’s SUV, doesn’t dare tear his eyes away even as Argent starts up the car. </p>
<p>Isaac looks up only once, meeting Scott’s eyes as the car pulls away from the curb, and there is a hole inside of Scott, a hole that just keeps getting deeper and deeper, a well where every single loss sits, and he tells himself that Isaac leaving is just a drop in the well, another ripple in the deep. </p>
<p>It will fade, he tells himself as the taillights of the SUV disappear around a corner.</p>
<p>It will fade. </p><hr/>
<p>It does fade, in time. </p>
<p>In the beginning, both of them try. That first day, he gets a few texts—updates about the flight, pictures of the street outside Argent’s apartment. But international texts are expensive, no matter how extra shifts Scott squeezes out of Deaton, and international phone calls are out of the question. There are emails—occasional, brief, and containing only enough information to reassure Scott that Isaac hasn’t dropped dead or been taken out by hunters who haven’t heard Argent’s new code.  </p>
<p>In the beginning, both of them try, but the ghosts that sat between them in Beacon Hills seem to linger everywhere, and Scott stops getting any updates at all. And then there’s Malia, and Kira, Kate and Derek and aging spells and the Deadpool. </p>
<p>And Scott does what he promised himself he wouldn’t do: he asks for help. And Argent comes, but he comes alone. </p>
<p>“This place took everything from him, Scott,” Argent says, sitting across from Scott at the kitchen table, a mug of barely touched coffee at his elbow, and Scott can hear the silent <i>it took everything from me, too</i>. “I couldn’t ask him to come back with me.”</p>
<p>Scott wants to protest, wants to say <i>Not everything</i>, to both of them.</p>
<p>But. </p>
<p>Isaac’s father. His brother. The mother he refused to talk about. Erica. Boyd. </p>
<p>Argent’s wife. His father and his sister in every way that mattered. </p>
<p>Allison. </p>
<p>So he doesn’t say anything. He just nods and tries to understand. </p><hr/>
<p>When they figure the next threat out, because it’s Beacon Hills and there is always a next threat, Scott knows he won’t call. It is the first time he has ever been sure of that fact. It is the first time that Scott realizes that it is better that Isaac is so far from Beacon Hills. </p>
<p>Because he is thinking about the Oni, their blades ripping Isaac to shreds. He is thinking about Isaac at the hospital, burns covering his face and arms, and how Scott managed to take some of his pain away and how it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. He is thinking about the alphas beating Isaac nearly to death after they found him at the bank vault. He is thinking about Allison, vengeful and hating and turning her knives on people who were trying to be allies. He is thinking about Allison and Aiden and Boyd and Erica, gone, truly gone. He is thinking about a thousand and one punchesbitesscratches, about panic attacks in janitor’s closets. He is thinking about that time before werewolves and fresh bruises Isaac could never completely hide. He is thinking about Isaac screaming, crying out, afraid, always so afraid, and for the first time since his beta left, Scott is grateful that Isaac is far, far away, where he can’t get hurt again. </p>
<p>Where Scott can’t get him hurt. </p><hr/>
<p>When he realizes what Monroe is planning, a small, selfish part of him thinks about calling. Because there is a Nemeton in Toulouse, which is only a four-hour drive from Marseille. Scott Googles it. And he doesn’t know if Isaac even has a car, or if he knows how to drive on the other side of the road, if he has a pack or any allies or anyone who could help him, and part of him doesn’t even care if it means he gets to hear his voice again. </p>
<p>But he remembers Argent’s words when he first came back to Beacon Hills and he doesn’t make the call. </p><hr/>
<p>No matter the crisis, Scott keeps his promise and doesn’t call, and he and his pack pull through. For a while, it’s enough. With the threat of the hunters handled, with Liam and Mason and Corey and Theo staying behind, Scott feels okay about leaving. He won’t be far, and they’ve proven themselves capable of handling anything that Beacon Hills will undoubtedly throw at them. </p>
<p>Scott packs up the Jeep and drives to UC Davis and he doesn’t look back. </p><hr/>
<p>The ticket is a Christmas gift, his mother’s name underneath Deaton’s on the card the vet hands him after a shift he picked up on break. </p>
<p>“We meant to give this to you sooner,” Deaton tells him as Scott stares down at the flight information in bold, uncompromising black letters. “This was originally in a graduation card.”</p>
<p>And Scott…Scott doesn’t know what to say. He knows he should be <i>Thank you</i> or <i>I can’t accept this</i> or <i>how did you know how</i>.</p>
<p>“Why?” is the only thing he can choke out. Deaton is smiling.</p>
<p>“We agreed that you could use a vacation,” the vet says, busying himself cleaning up a tray of sutures and disinfectant from their last surgery. “And your mother says that Argent’s updates about Isaac aren’t satisfying. She wants pictures, proof of life.”</p>
<p>Scott’s heart is pounding, the love he feels for his family in that moment so overwhelming that he’s sure it will crush him into tiny pieces. </p>
<p>“I can’t—” </p>
<p>“You can,” Deaton cuts him off. “And you’re going to. So if I were you, I’d start packing. Your mother is driving you to the airport first thing in the morning.”</p>
<p>The thick paper of the ticket barely registers in the grip of his numb fingers. </p>
<p>“Thank you,” he manages at last. Deaton’s grin widens. </p>
<p>“You’re welcome. Now get out of here. And don’t forget to send pictures.”</p><hr/>
<p>Isaac has been gone for three months the first time Scott summons the courage to go into the guest bedroom. He’s being ridiculous about it, he knows that. It’s just a room. Except it isn’t just a room, and he and his mother have been avoiding this for too long, neither of them willing to accept what it means. </p>
<p>Scott knows that Isaac didn’t have much when he moved in, that he acquired very little while he was here. Scott also knows that Isaac left with two bags that definitely weren’t big enough to carry all of his sweaters. Sure enough, Scott finds a handful of sweaters still hanging up in the closet, grey and yellow and green striped. Isaac’s least favorites, the ones he would only wear as a last resort. Scott fingers the sleeve of the green striped one. It used to be his, something a great aunt bought for him a half dozen Christmases ago, several sizes too big in the hopes he would grow into it. He gave it to Isaac the night he showed up on Scott’s doorstep, dripping wet and freezing. He remembers the offended face Isaac had made when Scott had offered the sweater to him, eying the uneven stripes with distaste. </p>
<p><i>It’s this or the neon pink pullover Stiles got me for my birthday two years ago</i>.</p>
<p>Scott pulls his hand away, turns his back on the closet. Apart from the sweaters, there is a stack of comic books on the desk, lent to Isaac from Scott’s extensive Spider-Man library. The bed is made. Sort of. There was at least an attempt to straighten the comforter. A battered copy of <i>Breakfast of Champions</i> sits on the nightstand, propping up a piece of torn notebook paper. Scott sinks down on the edge of the bed, picks up the piece of paper, sees the familiar tilt of Isaac’s shitty handwriting. </p>
<p>
  <i>Thank you. For everything.</i>
</p>
<p>When his mom gets home an hour later, that’s where she finds him, sitting on the edge of a half-made bed, clutching the piece of paper in his hand. Silently, she sits down next to him, her arm sliding around his shoulders as she pulls him in. And Scott is seventeen years old. He is an alpha werewolf, a soon-to-be high school senior, basically an adult, but he sags in his mother’s arms, burrows as close to her as he can, inhales the apple and cherry scent of her shampoo. </p>
<p>“I miss him, mom,” he admits, and her grip on him tightens as she buries her nose in his hair. </p>
<p>“I miss him, too, baby.”	</p><hr/>
<p>The flight is long but Scott sleeps through most of it, and it’s the most rest he’s gotten in what feels like years. There are two stops, Scott stumbling half-awake through unfamiliar airports, his passport in one hand and a gigantic coffee in the other. On the last leg of the flight, Scott only wakes twice. Once when the stewardess comes by to ask him chicken, beef, or vegetarian. He asks for beef and scarfs the whole tray in under a minute before passing out again. The second time he wakes up it’s to the same stewardess—kind, round face and soft brown eyes that make him think of his mother—asking him to put up his tray as they begin their decent. </p>
<p>When he gets off the plane, there’s a text from Argent waiting on his phone. Directions to the apartment, the number of a cab company, helpful phrases in French that Scott is definitely going to butcher. He has no idea if Isaac knows he’s coming, if Argent bothered to give him a heads up, but he is too tired to worry about it either way. He calls a cab, squinting at the screen of his phone against the glare of the afternoon sun. It’s not as cold as he thought it would be, and he unwinds the scarf from around his neck as he waits for the cab. It doesn’t match the green striped sweater, anyway. </p>
<p>He dozes in the cab, too. He doesn’t mean to, fights to keep his eyes open, to take in the buildings and the winding streets and the people passing by on bikes and mopeds, but his eyes keep drifting closed. </p>
<p><i>Spare key is in the turtle</i> Argent texts right as the cab pulls up in front of a six-story brick building on a quiet side street. The apartment building—old, a little saggy—is held up on one side by a squat bistro and on the other by a flower shop spilling displays of lilies and violets over the sidewalk. The scents of pressed sandwiches and dying flowers threatens, for a moment, to overwhelm him, but Scott reigns his senses in and starts digging through the bushes outside of the apartment. It takes ten minutes of hunting for him to find the terra cotta turtle where it’s practically buried beneath damp dirt and rotten leaves, but find it he does, fishing the key out of its hollow belly with a tiny shout of triumph. </p>
<p>The apartment is silent when he lets himself in. He pauses on the threshold, straining his ears to reach every corner, but there’s nothing, not yet, so Scott drops his bag by the sofa in the living room and gives himself a tour. The apartment the Argent’s had in Beacon Hills was bright and open, all pristine white walls and lacy curtains and pale pine floors. This apartment is an ocean of shadows, the expensive wallpaper in every shade of blue imaginable, the hardwood floors deep brown and pitted with age, the furniture leather and heavy. And it’s huge. Scott can’t help but think about Isaac here, alone, rattling around this big empty space. </p>
<p>Maybe he’s not alone, Scott thinks as he opens cabinets at random in the kitchen. Maybe he found a new pack, made some new friends. It’s been over two years, after all. Maybe he even met someone. And Scott tells himself as he pokes around the books in what must be Argent’s office that he hopes Isaac has met someone. Tells himself it would be better that way. Better that Isaac wasn’t alone, and he almost buys it. </p>
<p>There is a master bedroom with an ensuite that Scott assumes was meant for Argent. The bed is neat as a pin and the closet is mostly empty. The second bedroom is smaller, but not by much, and it is definitely Isaac’s, Scott would know even if his scent didn’t linger in the dusty air. It’s messy in the same way Isaac’s room at Scott’s house used to be—t-shirts and sweaters tossed over chairs, abandoned books lying face down near the nightstand, bed messy and inviting. </p>
<p>And Scott, apparently, hadn’t gotten enough sleep on the plane because he doesn’t think twice about crawling onto Isaac’s bed. He’s out as soon as his head hits the pillow, his lungs full of a scent he hasn’t let himself miss for the last two years.</p><hr/>
<p>If he lets himself be honest, he knew what was happening between them. He knew, but he would deny it when Stiles cracked a joke about it, laugh the whole thing off with a come on, man. He would ignore it when Lydia pinned him with her too-knowing gaze and her sympathetic smiles. There was just never any time to think about it, to let himself wonder. Not in the wake of Allison dumping him, not after Kira transferred to Beacon Hills High. </p>
<p>Except there was time, and Scott did wonder. Wonder what it would be like if he leaned into Isaac just a little bit, pushed into the fleeting, careful touches. What would it be like if he let his head fall onto Isaac’s shoulder? If Scott slipped his hand into Isaac’s? If he knotted their fingers together and held on tight. </p>
<p>What would it be like if Scott stopped being afraid, if he let himself do what he had been wanting too since the start of Junior year? What if he let himself bury his fingers in Isaac’s curls, if he pulled Isaac’s head down, if he traced the shape of Isaac’s lips with his tongue?</p>
<p>
  <i>What if, what if, what if?</i>
</p>
<p>What he and Isaac had was easy. Simple. Good. They trusted each other, and that trust was worth more to Scott than any what ifs, so he pretended that he didn’t notice the way Isaac leaned into him, the way his eyes lingered, the way his loyalty and devotion couldn’t be written off so easily as that of a beta to his alpha. </p>
<p>Later, he always told himself. I’ll deal with it later. </p><hr/>
<p>When Scott wakes up, the light shining through his closed eyelids is deep orange instead of butter yellow and there is someone in the bed with him. And suddenly, everything around him is five hundred times sharper. Everything is real. The sheets beneath him are soft and creased, the comforter heavy and warm. The scent of pine trees and sunshine fills him up and Scott is grinning into the pillow, finally forcing himself to open his eyes.</p>
<p>Isaac’s heartbeat is steady, the kind of steady it only ever gets in the deepest sleep. Scott turns onto his side. Isaac is curled up facing him, long legs tucked up nearly to his chest. One of his hands is buried beneath his pillow. The other is stretched out towards Scott, fingers curled, hidden away. The sharp angles of his face aren’t any less sharp in sleep, and the cut of his cheekbones in the fading sunlight makes Scott’s stomach flip. </p>
<p>He loses track of time studying Isaac’s face, recommitting it to memory, and he promises himself <i>never again.</i></p>
<p>He’s never letting Isaac walk away again. </p>
<p>He doesn’t notice when Isaac wakes up, only realizes that he is awake when his own eyes flick up from where they were studying Isaac’s lips to see sleepy blue staring back at him.</p>
<p>“Hey,” Scott says, voice barely above a whisper, wondering if Isaac can hear the way his heart is pounding. </p>
<p>“Hey,” Isaac whispers back, the word barely making a dent in the silence between them, and Scott feels every single hourdayweek that’s passed since the last time he saw Isaac and he can’t stop himself from crawling forward, from burying his face in Isaac’s neck, from digging blunt human nails into his shoulders, trying to convince himself <i>he’s real, he’s here, this is real.</i> And Isaac lets him, bracketing Scott’s spine with a matching set of crescent shaped marks. “I missed you.”</p>
<p>And Scott is lucky. He is so lucky. To have a pack, to have a family. And he promises himself that if Isaac can’t come home, then Scott will bring home to him.</p><hr/>
<p>“Ms. Ramirez in 208 needs fresh pillows, if you could, Sarah,” Melissa says as she rounds the corner of the nurse’s station. Sarah nods and scurries off and Melissa finally, finally lets herself sink into the threadbare chair behind the desk. </p>
<p>“Six hours down, four more to go,” she mutters, gifting herself ten seconds with her head back and her eyes closed before she breathes deep and sits back up. </p>
<p>Her phone beeps. She fishes it out of the pockets of her scrubs to find a text from Scott. He had texted her every couple of hours since boarding his flight, letting her know each time he landed and took off again on his long journey, the last text being a photo of the street outside the Marseille airport. This text is another photo, one that is that is taking ages to download on the overextended hospital Wi-Fi. She puts her phone down to let it do its thing and logs onto the computer, turns her attention to the paperwork she’s been avoiding all morning. An hour later, she pulls her aching eyes from the computer screen, remembers the text, picks up her phone. </p>
<p>It’s a picture of Scott and Isaac, heads close, the sky behind them streaked orange and yellow in the setting sun. Scott is grinning into the camera, his arm around Isaac’s shoulders. Isaac’s smile is softer, his face turned so his forehead is resting on Scott’s temple, and the ticket to France wasn’t cheap, but Melissa knows then and there that it was worth every penny.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Title taken from In My Veins by Andrew Belle but the real inspiration behind this was The Alarmist by Pinegrove. </p>
<p>
  <i>it's about the longing.</i>
</p></blockquote></div></div>
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